Review: Williams Jeffrey P, Schneider Edgar W, Peter Trudgill and Daniel Schreier (eds.). Further Studies in the Lesser-Known Varieties of English (Studies in English Language). Cambridge, U.K: Cambridge University Press

Abstract

Varieties of English do not typically figure in language documentation efforts, but research on them follows the broad goals of descriptive linguistics. The editors of the present volume, for instance, justify their focus on so-called lesser-known varieties by arguing that they might provide new "insights into larger questions in linguistics and sociolinguistics" (p. 1). Instead of discussing the precise nature of these insights, the editors tend towards questions of definition though. They propose eight characteristics to define the term lesser-known varieties of English and to justify juxtaposing descriptions of thirteen varieties of English from three broad regions – Europe, Americas, Asia and Pacific – in a single volume. Some criteria refer to broadly linguistic matters (linguistic distinctiveness, emergence from contact), others to sociolinguistic issues (important local means of communication, association with a stable speaker community, speakers as minorities, identity function, endangered status), and yet others are historical in nature (emergence from settler communities, adoption by emerging communities with substantial British inputs).